


Questa Notte

by ArtDeco



Category: The Halcyon (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Escape to the Country, M/M, Post-Canon, Romance, Secret Relationship, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28393131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtDeco/pseuds/ArtDeco
Summary: 'He opened the door into the kitchen, and found Toby - pyjama sleeves rolled up, white streaks in his hair, as though he’d aged prematurely overnight - looking guilty, and defiant about it.'In the early hours of Christmas Eve, Adil finds that even after a year together, Toby still has the power to surprise him.
Relationships: Toby Hamilton/Adil Joshi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 14
Collections: Halcyon winter holidays 2020





	Questa Notte

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inner_tempest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inner_tempest/gifts).



> The prompt was: a period piece with family stuff and Adil and Toby getting a bit tipsy. Happy holidays, inner_tempest, and I hope you enjoy this! X

* * *

He stirred, a mouse in its emptied nest, sensing his absence; unfurling, reaching, and the sheets were still warm, but Toby wasn’t in them.

He opened his eyes. The dark was thicker here, thicker than the blackout, and stiller, as though the landscape had just breathed out, settled in sleep. No footsteps in the corridor, telephones, water running, the grinding of the lift, traffic, the siren. No voices. As though they were the only living things in this corner of the world, the re-colonisers. He’d never been somewhere this dark, and this still. He’d never been in a bed this large on his own.

He sat up and put on the lamp. Toby’s room was high and narrow, the shape of a cell, with a bay window that looked out across the parkland. Blue walls. Blue curtains. Blue linen. The wood was heavy and old. Bed. Fireplace. Wardrobe. Armchair. Bookshelf. All beautifully-made, for another Hamilton boy, a century or so before. Beautifully matching. Probably very expensive. Not intended for interlopers.

His feet sank into the carpet. After the war, when he found a proper flat, a flat of his own – though who knew how long after, with his recent extravagance – he’d have carpet in every room. Even the bathroom. He’d forget to put the mat down and track wet prints to the bedroom. Toby would do it deliberately, just so he could make it up to him. Two bedrooms in Kensington, by the museums, where bachelors and academics could unassumingly split the rent. Only half an hour to the Halcyon by bus. They would be disliked by their neighbours for playing the wireless too loudly, and for the ‘foreign’ smell of Adil’s cooking; then Toby would add ‘The Hon.’ before his name on the doorbell, and the complaints would immediately dry up. Adil would crawl into bed beside him at four in the morning. But on their days off: an exhibition, or the cinema, or Kensington Gardens, or Adil would visit his parents in the evening and return to Toby waiting up for him, forthright, willing. On long nights in the shelter, he picked out their wallpaper, their drinks cabinet, arranged Toby’s books on their shelves. Saw him in their bed, paler than the sheets, drowsing, making room in the nest.

On the wall above the bookcase was a large rectangular photograph. Rows and rows of white faces, like sets of pearls, black tailcoats, black dotted eyes, staring forward, shoulders back, necks straight, no smiles. _Eton College, Form V, December 1932._ He found fifteen-year-old Toby mid-shiver, second from the right, fourth row back, sullen, coltish, beautiful, consumed by his own misery. In December 1932 Adil had been washing glasses behind a pub counter, hands raw and cracking in the hot water, paid in cash at the end of the night, scurrying home to hide the coins in the jar in his sock drawer, getting into bed beside his brother, kicked sleepily by cold feet. Boys like Toby, with their gold-plated lives, would have been easy to dislike. He looked at the lines of faces, remote, obedient, accepting the way of things, only two years left of their sentence, before real life could at last begin. If he’d known that unhappy boy then…

He turned away. Toby’s stick was leaning against the bedside table. He couldn’t hear any movement in the passage. The last time Toby had done this, only a week after the accident, he’d been slumped stubbornly against the bathtub in his ensuite for almost two hours until Adil had found him. He put on Toby’s winter dressing gown, rather long in the arm, and went out into the passage, more thick carpet between his toes, calling his name, flashing his torch into the empty bathroom, then into dark, dusty rooms shrouded in white sheets, windows shuttered, the faces in the portraits looking down at him sleepily, a house at rest now the party was over.

Down the main staircase. Across the hall, wood and stone and gilt. Toby had left the key in the front doors. The cold night burned his throat. The snow lay undisturbed, glittering like sand. It was still coming down, gentle, polite, as though it knew they were in residence and didn’t like to disturb. Snow in London was grey and black, trodden into slush, then frozen overnight, the pavements turned to glass. Here it was as neat and unspoiled as the house itself. He imagined Toby at ten, twelve, home from school, sat in his window seat, looking out across the iced grounds, excited for Christmas Day. Running outside with Freddie, throwing snowballs, building snowmen, dark hair flecked with white. Like the pink-cheeked little children on Christmas cards. Inside, a huge, showy tree. The smell of pine and clementine. Candles. Piles of presents. Roasted goose. Chocolate coins for the children, dressed in their best clothes, smart little adults-in-waiting. He’d worked enough Christmases at the Halcyon to know how the English liked it.

Well, at least he hadn’t gone outside. Adil locked the doors again. They’d had an early dinner in the village pub, hungry from the train, and Toby had said he’d show him the kitchens in the morning. But perhaps he’d woken up peckish. The advantage of living in one room, Adil thought, slipping through the green baize door leading off from the hall: you didn’t have to trek down two flights of stairs for a cup of tea.

He was below ground level now, and he felt the drop in temperature, flagstones icy on the soles of his feet. His torchlight stretched weakly. He’d never been frightened of the dark, but then he’d never been in a house as old as this one; perhaps generations of Hamiltons and their servants lived in the walls. There was always a maid who’d fallen to her death, or a drowned stable lad, or a troubled son, or a mad aunt, doomed to forever prowl the place that killed them.

“Toby?” he called. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. “Toby, are you down here?”

“Don’t come in!”

There was a strip of light beneath a door at the end of the passage.

“Toby? Are you alright?”

“You’re going to ruin it!”

“Ruin what?” He knocked on the door. “What’s going on?”

“The surprise!”

“Toby, it’s two in the morning.”

“Exactly. Go back to bed. Everything’s under control.”

His hands were numbing around the torch. “Toby, I’m coming in.”

“Wait – ”

He opened the door into the kitchen, a square, warm room with a scrubbed table in the centre, and found Toby - pyjama sleeves rolled up, white streaks in his hair, as though he’d aged prematurely overnight - looking guilty, and defiant about it.

“Are you _cooking_?”

Toby limped around the table, shielding the scales.

“You needn’t sound so shocked.”

“ _I_ ’ll make you something if you’re hungry. We came here so you could rest.”

“I rested on the train. Now go away. You’re ruining it.”

“What?”

“Your surprise, for heaven’s sake!”

Toby’s arms were folded across his chest, hunched like an angry hedgehog. Adil cupped his scowling face.

“You’re awfully sweet.”

“I’m not _sweet_ ,” Toby said, but allowed Adil to drop little kisses onto his cheeks, nose, jaw, brush the flour from his hair.

“And for someone who spent his youth sneaking to the library after hours, you’re terrible at talking yourself out of trouble.”

“It’s my house! You can’t tell me off for sneaking down to my own kitchen.”

“Ah, so you admit to the sneaking then?”

Adil pressed him back against the table, working down the column of his throat.

“Stop – uh – distracting me.” A hand pushed at his chest. “Once I’ve finished.”

Toby hobbled back to his scales, rather pink in the face, and began weighing out brown sugar.

“You ought to take some of this back with you,” he said, thumping the bag down on the table, “save your coupons. I was sure they’d clear the cupboards when the house was shut up.”

“Can I help?”

“No. Sit down and don’t get in my way.”

A fraying armchair wilted in the corner of the kitchen, retired from a lesser bedroom, and Adil tucked his feet under him and watched Toby grate ginger root into the bowl. The skin around his eye was barely yellow now. He’d been an aggravating patient, caustic and spiky. Arguing with the doctor. Chafing at kindness. Popping painkillers like sweets before work. It was as though he thought they were testing him, and the less help he accepted, the higher his final mark. Sprained ankle, three cracked ribs, and a concussion. It should have been far worse. Only Toby would try to carry a typewriter, his briefcase and a cup of coffee down to the War Office shelter without turning on the stairwell light.

“What’s this surprise you’re making for me then?”

Toby was rubbing in the margarine, muscles in his forearms pulsing like piano strings.

“Gingerbread. I, er, didn’t think you’d have had it before.” He half-shrugged. “Just something silly for Christmas. I won’t mind if you don’t like it.”

“Course I will. You’re making it.”

Toby rolled his eyes, but he was pinkening again.

“There’s brandy on the table if you want some. Strictly medicinal, of course.”

Adil poured two glasses and held Toby’s to his mouth, his fingers greasy from the bowl.

“You didn’t have to do all this for me.”

“I know I didn’t have to. Pass me the syrup.”

Adil levered the lid off with the handle of a spoon. The rim had crystallised, but the syrup was still clear and dark, like liquid amber. He dipped a finger into the tin.

Toby bent his head and took the finger into his mouth. He flicked his tongue, looking up at him delicately. When Adil kissed him, he tasted sweet and bright and sticky, and Adil held him there, fisting creases into his pyjamas.

“I told you not to get in my way,” Toby breathed.

If he hadn’t had a sprained ankle and three cracked ribs and a recent concussion, Adil would have repurposed the kitchen table and shown him just how in-the-way he was capable of being. But he stepped back, having to steady him, thumbing syrup from the corner of his mouth.

“Finish your gingerbread then, sweetheart.”

He poured himself another brandy, leaning back against the refrigerator. It was going down a treat – and this was presumably just the stuff used for cooking. He looked around. His entire childhood home could fit comfortably in this kitchen.

“Did you spend much time here growing up?”

Toby’s mouth was shiny. He turned the dough out onto the table, flouring it with practiced hands, colour high on his face. He hadn’t looked this well since his accident.

“Freddie and I lived here until we were eight – I don’t think we set foot in the hotel until we started prep school – but after that it was only a few weeks in the summer, once the Season was over. And Christmas.” His face twisted. “New Year in London, Christmas in the country. I’d have rather stayed at school.”

He was rolling the dough out vigorously.

“My father’s _attachments_ tended to get – well, rather too attached at Christmastime. I suppose they hoped Santa Claus might bring them Lord Hamilton’s divorce papers. I used to creep down here and watch the cook. Keep out of the line of fire. It was quite nice, really. My father would never come into the kitchens. I could just sit in that armchair and not be in anyone’s way. It was like I could stop existing for a bit.”

He smiled. There was flour on his nose.

“That’s how I know how to make gingerbread, anyway.”

Adil watched him cut stars and snowflakes and antlered deer and holly sprigs and little people out of the dough. He looked softer, in his dark green pyjamas, an inch of white ankle showing below the trouser hem. The country suited him. Even Adil, whose only taste of rural life had been a day-trip to Henley-on-Thames, could find something restful in the silence and the smallness and the lush, flat land. But it was Freddie’s house now; and Emma’s too, once he returned from North Africa and they fixed the date. The diamond, set in the Hamilton emeralds, glistened on her finger like dew on grass. Toby’s nieces and nephews might grow up here, until, like their father and uncle, they were sent to school and the house would stand empty and loveless again. Emma wouldn’t want to live this far from London. Freddie should gift it to Toby. Or the hunting lodge in Scotland. Or the cottage on the Jurassic Coast. But that wasn’t how these families worked.

“Let me get the door,” he said, when Toby picked up the trays. The oven was an old-fashioned range, black-leaded, rumbling like a sleeping hound.

“Just wait.” Toby set the egg timer. “You’ll be sorry you spoilt the surprise when you try one.”

He touched his ribs, mouth tightening for a moment.

“Come and sit down now.” Adil chivvied him towards the armchair. “Your mother’s paying me time-and-a-half to look after you.”

“And you do it so well,” Toby said, pushing him into the seat, sinking to his knees, wearing his contrite look that he’d never quite perfected, “and I’ve been so difficult. Won’t you let me thank you while we wait?”

“I thought the gingerbread was my thank you. Come on, you’ll hurt your ankle – ”

“An apology then. For waking you up. Worrying you.” He was stroking up Adil’s thighs towards the strings of his pyjama bottoms, head cocked, sparkling, cocky little smile. “I’m a dreadful host. May I try to make it up to you?”

And then the single word Adil was powerless to resist: “Please?”

Adil let his head drop back, the worn chair full of old kitchen smells, allowing himself to be thanked, appeased, worshipped, whichever little game Toby had decided on; it was difficult to remember when he was playing it so blindingly. After, he pressed his face into Adil’s thigh, and Adil smoothed his hair, the velvet of his ears, feeling the warm, quick breaths against his leg.

“You’re so good to me.”

“Only what you deserve.”

“You never need to thank me for looking after you. I like it.”

“And I like thanking you.” Toby raised his head, smiling a little dazedly. “Am I still in trouble?”

Adil laughed. “It’s only ever if you want to be, you know that.”

“I always like being in trouble with you.”

“I’ll go,” Adil said when the timer rang, but Toby heaved himself up and over to the oven. He set the trays on the table to cool, the smell of ginger and cooked sugar tickling the back of Adil’s throat, and picked up the bottle of brandy by the neck, swigging deeply as he sat in Adil’s lap.

“I’m sorry I woke you. I did try to be quiet.”

“I’m sure you were. I must just have a sixth sense where you’re concerned.”

Toby felt warm and solid against his body. How rare it was to have the time to hold him like this, to savour him, to not have one eye on the bedside clock. Adil found the skin beneath his pyjama shirt, gripped his bony waist, reached the other hand between his legs. He wanted him here, in his family’s kitchen, where he had come to pretend he didn’t exist.

“Don’t,” Toby whispered. “I just, er – ” he was turning pink again – “I like it when it’s just about you sometimes.”

Adil licked the brandy from his mouth. They passed the bottle between them, giggling at nothing, the range creaking as it cooled, until Toby’s head drooped against his shoulder.

“Am I giving you a dead leg?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Thank God I managed to convince Mother not to come. _That_ was a job and a half.”

“She’s going to miss you.”

“She’ll be locking horns with Mr Garland all Christmas. She’ll be in her element.”

Toby’s jaw cracked as he yawned.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve arranged some time off for you after New Year. Before Dhani goes back to school.” He pressed a kiss to Adil’s neck. “You’re looking worn-out.”

“A holiday, gingerbread _and_ time off? You’re spoiling me.”

“It’s hardly a holiday, running round after me. Anyway, you deserve spoiling and you never let me, but I doubt even you could deny your own mother.”

Adil squeezed his waist. “I’ll bring you back a peshwari naan.”

He hadn’t seen his parents since Diwali. Toby’s accident had frightened him. How easily he could have snapped his neck, shattered his skull… Morbid, Toby called him. But death had shadowed them all for so long. He felt the spectre of it. He wanted to spend every snatched moment with Toby, while he still had him whole and smiling in his hands. Toby had joined his parents and Priya and Dhani as another member of his family – though they could never meet. When he sat in his childhood home, watching Priya and her husband, watching his parents, he felt the truth that separated him. Toby was the only one of them who could ever know all of him.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

Toby had turned his head away, looking out at the kitchen, so his hair tickled the underside of Adil’s chin. Adil felt his bruised ribs stretch and settle beneath his hand.

“I wanted to wait until we were here.”

They didn’t have secrets anymore. He didn’t realise how tightly he was holding him until he felt him wince.

“I met with the aide-de-camp last Wednesday.”

“Oh?” he said, when he fell silent again, flicking the buttons on Adil’s pyjamas.

“I’m being – not promoted, not really. Redeployed.”

“To a new department?”

“Not exactly. It’s more money, more responsibility, so I suppose it _is_ a promotion in a way. But I’d be working in a much smaller team. I had to sit a kind of test at the meeting. Almost like a crossword puzzle. Sorry, I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say.”

“But you’re staying in Whitehall, at the War Office?”

Toby touched the bare skin of his little finger, searching absently for the ring.

“It’s a town called Bletchley. Just north of London. There’s a direct train from Euston.”

“So you’d – travel in every day?”

“No. No, I have to find digs there. The hours…”

He was rigid on Adil’s lap.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Why are you sorry? This is good news.”

He felt him flinch, and realised his mistake. He pulled him closer.

“Of course I don’t want to be apart from you. I’m going to miss you like hell. But I’m so proud of you.”

He felt the rapid thump of Toby’s chest against his own ribs.

“Not that it matters, I have to go wherever they tell me,” he said, not looking up, “but I think I could perhaps be good at it.”

“Of course that matters.”

“And it shows they trust me.”

Adil ran his thumb back and forth across his kneecap. It had been said in innocence, but after last winter, this _redeployment_ had been a long time in coming, longer than Toby’s talents warranted.

“When do you start?”

“January 6th. Mother’s going to be terrible about it. She’ll say I’m abandoning her.”

Adil thought of the lonely faces in the photograph, and decided Lady Hamilton ought to count her blessings.

“I’ll come back as often as I can. Every day off. We can write, speak on the ‘phone. And you’re starting with the Fire Service in the new year anyway, so we’d hardly be seeing each other.”

Adil kissed him, squeezing him carefully, breathing him in.

“I’ll love you wherever in the world you are.”

“If I could get out of it – ”

“I wouldn’t let you. They need that brain.”

“I swear, if you burn yourself to a crisp while I’m gone… I know what you’re like. Trying to be everyone’s hero.”

“You liked the uniform though, didn’t you?”

Toby elbowed him. “We had to check its durability.”

They were halfway down the brandy bottle. Adil’s eyes felt like two soap bubbles, winking lazily, pink and round and glassy. Tomorrow, he would feel the grief, for their early mornings, the giddy minutes of his breaks, fingers brushing across a glass; but now it was hard to feel anything but lucky, in this warm kitchen, good liquor in their stomachs, snow on the ground, this remarkable boy in his arms, four gloriously empty days ahead of them. The Adil of ’32, hoarding his pennies, cramped in his shared bed, couldn’t have dared to dream it.

He said, “I can come to you too.”

“Of course. I can sort your permits for the trains – ”

“I won’t need permits. I’ve bought a motorcycle.”

He hadn’t wanted to tell him yet. He’d rile himself up about danger and safety and be picking out Adil’s headstone within ten minutes; and it _had_ been ridiculously, uncharacteristically extravagant. But the utter shock on his face was really rather lovely. He wasn’t the only one who could give surprises.

“A motorcycle?”

“I’ll be out all hours with the Fire Service. I can’t rely on buses to get me to work on time.”

“A _motorcycle_?”

“Mr Feldman will help me out with petrol. He owes me a few favours.”

“And you’re planning to ride it to Bletchley? It must be fifty miles!”

“Well, I’ll have to practice a bit first.”

“Will you wear a leather jacket?”

Toby was suddenly kneeling over him, dark-eyed.

“I don’t own a leather jacket,” Adil said.

“I haven’t used my clothing coupons in nearly a year. I’m going to get you a dark brown leather jacket with fleece lining. And matching gloves.”

Toby kissed him, clutching at his jaw.

“You’re going to look magnificent.”

“Too expensive – ”

“Let me. Please. You’ll like them.”

“So it’s all for _my_ benefit, is it?”

Toby grinned. “To our mutual advantage, I think.”

“On one condition: once I know what I’m doing, you’ll come for a ride on the back.”

“I’ve had enough injuries for the time being, thank you.”

“You’ll be holding onto me the entire time.”

Toby hesitated. Adil threaded his fingers into his hair.

“I’ll look after you, sweetheart.” He gave a little tug. “I always look after you, don’t I?”

He held him still, touching his teeth to his neck.

“You’ll be right up against me in front of everyone. They’ll see your arms around me, and they’ll all be jealous of me, that I’m the one who has you.”

“They’ll be jealous of _me_. Getting to be yours.”

Toby breathed out shakily.

“I get a helmet.”

“Of course.”

“And you keep the jacket on for a bit afterwards.”

“But no distracting me while we’re actually on the thing, else we’ll both be in trouble, and not the kind you like. Speaking of which,” he said, and, unhooking Toby’s hands from around his neck, lifted them both out of the armchair and threw him elegantly over his shoulder.

Toby shrieked.

“How dare you – you brute – ”

He was scrabbling ineffectually at Adil’s back.

“Need to keep the weight off that ankle, sweetheart.”

“Put me down – Adil – Adil, I need to tidy up!”

“In the morning. Bed now.”

“It _is_ the bloody morning!”

He felt the vibrations of Toby’s body as he struggled not to laugh; he was not doing his level best to get out of his predicament.

“I thought you’d _want_ me to practice my fireman’s lift.”

“Not at Christmas! And not on me!”

As they passed the table, Adil slipped two gingerbread stars into his dressing gown pocket.

“Put those back – I haven’t iced them yet – ”

“Just doing my job, darling,” Adil said, flicking off the kitchen light, squeezing his lovely legs, bright with loving him. “You’ll be hungry by the time I’ve finished with you.”

* * *


End file.
